On March 21, 2026, a conservative conference called CPAC Hungary was held in Budapest. Viktor Orbán gave the keynote. Hungary's national election was three weeks away.

Two American members of Congress were on the speaker list. The Hungarian outlet that announced the lineup described them this way: "Congressmen Russ Fulcher of Idaho and Andy Harris of Maryland will be representing the United States government."

Three weeks later, on April 12, Hungarians voted Orbán out.

It wasn't close. Péter Magyar's Tisza party took 138 of the 199 seats in parliament on 53.6% of the vote. Orbán's Fidesz got 55 seats. Turnout was the highest since the fall of Communism. After 16 years in power, Orbán called his opponent to concede and told his supporters, "The responsibility and possibility of governing was not given to us."

Ten days after that, Fulcher went on Facebook and wrote this:

"Hungary became the tip of the spear in the fight against globalism under Viktor Orbán, and an invaluable ally to the United States."

What Fulcher went to Budapest to celebrate

Orbán is the leader other leaders study when they want to know how to stay in power without technically stealing an election.

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, quoted in the column that flagged Fulcher's post, describe him as the modern world's most successful autocrat — a man who used the trappings of constitutional government to hollow it out. He changed how judges were appointed in order to pack the judiciary. Public media was "restructured" to cut coverage of his opponents in favor of party messaging; thousands of journalists lost their jobs and private outlets were harassed and fined. Universities were punished for programs that didn't toe the line. And he reworked the electoral process itself to keep his party in office.

Fulcher went anyway — he confirmed the trip in his own words afterward, writing that he'd had "the honor to meet with Hungary's leadership" — and came home describing the relationship as one that "perpetuates freedom of speech."

The Facebook post is the part that matters

Anyone can attend a conference. What makes this Fulcher's story rather than a scheduling item is what he wrote after the votes were counted.

On April 22, 2026, ten days after the landslide, he posted:

"Recently, I had the honor to meet with Hungary's leadership and discuss Orbán's successful pillars of Peace, Sovereignty, Freedom, and Security. It's my hope that their new leadership will see the value in maintaining these principles."

And:

"In Congress, I will continue to support a strong, enduring U.S.-Hungary relationship that perpetuates freedom of speech and sovereignty of nations."

Read what he's actually saying. Hungarian voters had just delivered the largest mandate any party has received in the history of democratic Hungary, explicitly to end Orbán's rule. Fulcher's message to them was that he hopes their new government keeps doing what the man they just fired was doing.

That is not a foreign policy position. It's a statement that the election result was the wrong answer.

Which is a thing Russ Fulcher has said before, about his own country

This is where it stops being about Hungary.

On the morning of January 6, 2021 — hours before the Capitol was attacked — Fulcher went on Fox & Friends to promote his plan to object to certifying the presidential election, saying "there are tens of millions of people who want to see some action on this."

A month earlier he had signed an amicus brief joined by 126 members of Congress asking the Supreme Court to throw out the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin over what it called "unconstitutional ballots."

That night, after the mob had been cleared out of the building, he voted to reject the certified electoral votes of Arizona and then Pennsylvania. He voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the attack. He voted against creating an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate it. And he voted against the Presidential Election Reform Act, the bill that made the vice president's role in counting electoral votes explicitly "ministerial" so no future president could lean on it.

At home in Idaho, he is pushing the SAVE Act — the bill requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. On a telephone town hall he told constituents he expects it to pass through a fast-track budget process that needs only a simple majority in the Senate, because it can't get 60 votes the normal way.

Six years of the same instinct: when the count doesn't go your way, the count was the problem.

What Idahoans get out of this

Nothing. That's the point worth sitting with.

Idaho's First District has real problems — pregnant patients being flown out of state because doctors are afraid to treat them, public land his own constituents want to keep federal, the cost of groceries. None of that was on the agenda in Budapest.

Former Idaho attorney general Jim Jones, writing in the Idaho Capital Sun, calls Fulcher "the most subservient member of Idaho's MAGA delegation." The Budapest trip is what subservience looks like when it needs a passport.

The bottom line

A sitting American congressman appeared at a rally for a foreign leader three weeks before that country's election, billed as representing the United States government. That leader lost by the widest margin in his country's democratic history.

Ten days later, Russ Fulcher told the winners he hoped they'd govern like the man they'd just removed.

He is on Idaho's ballot in November.

Source

• MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: One Congressman's Viktor Orbán Mind Meld — Marc C. Johnson, Tillamook County Pioneer (also published by the Lewiston Tribune, May 1, 2026)
• CPAC Hungary 2026 Speakers Revealed — Hungarian Conservative, March 2026